56 replies to this topic

[QuantumButler]

My pet tinfoil hat theory is this is testing a way to award "decent" players with more cbills to alleviate the economy woes. Just as the Halloween event was testing background systems for awarding salvage for CW.

If so I hope they make the formula for the bonus more sane though.

Joseph Mallan, on 17 November 2014 - 07:13 AM, said:

They only compensate the ones that come back alive. In a game like this more guns on an enemy the shorter the TTK. If you are worrying about your bank account in the middle of a fire fight, 'You might be a greedy Merc!'

This military compensation thing is a dumb argument, PGI has said they consider us all Mercs and The Military =/= Mercenaries.

[Gallowglas]

Any system that has me actively avoiding kills is broken. I'd agree that the end-of-match scoreboard is MUCH more in line with rewarding actual GOOD gameplay behavior.

If you absolutely MUST have a different formula, at least have kills and assists worth the same amount so that I'm not penalized for getting a kill. Better yet, remove kills and assists from the equation altogether and substitute in % of damage done on each mech. You can scale based on weight class so that (for example) assaults earn 1 point for every 10%, heavies earn 2 points for every 10%, etc. That way lights don't get penalized, but it rewards behavior that should correspond to coherent tactics.

Also, I think an average score for each faction would resolve the problem with lower population factions working at a huge disadvantage.

Edited by Gallowglas, 17 November 2014 - 09:34 AM.

[QuantumButler]

Gallowglas, on 17 November 2014 - 09:31 AM, said:

Any system that has me actively avoiding kills is broken. I'd agree that the end-of-match scoreboard is MUCH more in line with rewarding actual GOOD gameplay behavior.

If you absolutely MUST have a different formula, at least have kills and assists worth the same amount so that I'm not penalized for getting a kill. Better yet, remove kills and assists from the equation altogether and substitute in % of damage done on each mech. You can scale based on weight class so that (for example) assaults earn 1 point for every 10%, heavies earn 2 points for every 10%, etc. That way lights don't get penalized, but it rewards behavior that should correspond to coherent tactics.

Kills and assists should just be worth the same, with the bulk of the reward coming from "percentage damage", like in Warthunder.

The problem with making assists not very valuable is that kills are a zero sum thing, there can only ever be 12, isn't not really fair to penalize other players who helped but didn't get the killing blow.

Can that be gamed? Probably, but literally any system can be gamed, gamers are really good at figuring out the most optimal way to do a thing, how can they not? There's so many more of us than the devs, there is no way they could think of everything.

As long as it isn't super exploitable like the way it used to work so suicide grinding was more profitable than playing the game.

Robots taking long range guns and shooting everything for max assists isn't too bad, that's still helping the team, competent erLL spiders can be a great asset.

Edited by QuantumButler, 17 November 2014 - 09:37 AM.

[Gauvan]

I’m okay with getting extra C-Bills for gaming as usual, but the earnings were much too low in my opinion. By this I mean they were not generous enough to motivate me to play more than usual as has been the case with some earlier tournaments. Honestly, in the solo queue you could earn just as much in normal play as in lots of slow, static matches with groups parked on the sidelines chucking LRMs at each other or tickling one another with ER lasers.

[Murphy7]

I came away with 4.1 million extra c-bills, after a truly terrible run of trying to level some newly bought jenners. My top match score was from 3 kills 9 assists 950 damage in a Raven-3L that was just poking at everything. Want the win, it is worth kiling things. Only once people's scores were getting really high did I see much of the assists and turn away behavior.

[Belazaar]

Spheroid, on 16 November 2014 - 10:22 PM, said:

130 is trivial without LRMs. You can do it on most builds.

While I didn't matter about the builds as much, it did matter about the team. I did good most games. 1 to 2 kills 400 to 600 damage, but because we lost 12 to 4 I would only get an assist or 2.

I played solo and in groups.

I did my part, but I can't be held responsible for my teammates. I'm not good enough to carry a team.

[hybrid black]

Jeb, on 16 November 2014 - 10:03 PM, said:

130 points with the points only being dmg / 15, assist x 20, and kill x 10 is just insane...
It rewards poor play, and LRM boating so you get your assists...

a few of the recent events were done well... then we fall back into this garbage...

6 assists 150 dam omg so hard.. god dam scrubs in this game

[POWR]

Out of maybe 25 games, I got 2 that counted. I guess the triviality of getting that many assists is beyond me.

But then, I haven't played 10000 matches and spent a year's time ingame. No, I'm one of the casual joes who pays once in a while.

Edited by POWR, 17 November 2014 - 11:40 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

QuantumButler, on 17 November 2014 - 08:33 AM, said:

My pet tinfoil hat theory is this is testing a way to award "decent" players with more cbills to alleviate the economy woes. Just as the Halloween event was testing background systems for awarding salvage for CW.

If so I hope they make the formula for the bonus more sane though.



This military compensation thing is a dumb argument, PGI has said they consider us all Mercs and The Military =/= Mercenaries.

Your right. The Military has better perks. Free Mechs, Free transportation, Free repairs. More likely to be asked to be an Omega unit instead of enticed with a fat paycheck that's rarely collected. Less likely to be screwed over by the Paymaster General.

[terrycloth]

I got 10 qualifying games out of 30 or 40 I played over the weekend... 130 points was pretty hard. If your team lost, forget it, so that's half the games right there. If you did well but didn't manage to scratch the paint on every enemy somehow, forget it. My two best games didn't qualify because I got too many kills.

It really just seemed to be 'don't die in 10 seconds + your team wins + coin flip'.

[Jeb]

hybrid black, on 17 November 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:

6 assists 150 dam omg so hard.. god dam scrubs in this game

ok again this is not about the cbills... it was about the bad play it encouraged, which made playing NOT fun...

6 assists and 150 dmg does JACK ***** for your team... that is potentially 25 dmg per mech for the assists/dmg

3 kills and 3 assists 300 dmg doesn't get 130 points, but IMO was probably trying to win...

Which one was rewarding the player? The 6 assists and crappy 150 dmg...
Which player would you rather play with? I would rather play with the guy getting the kills in as that means 3 less mechs on the field to shoot at me...

So which way will people play? The way that rewards them the most... except in the PUG queue, players seemed to forget that to get the assist that mech also had to die...

Edited by Jeb, 17 November 2014 - 12:03 PM.

[hybrid black]

Jeb, on 17 November 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

ok again this is not about the cbills... it was about the bad play it encouraged, which made playing NOT fun...

6 assists and 150 dmg does JACK ***** for your team... that is potentially 25 dmg per mech for the assists/dmg

3 kills and 3 assists 300 dmg doesn't get 130 points, but IMO was probably trying to win...

Which one was rewarding the player? The 6 assists and crappy 150 dmg...
Which player would you rather play with? I would rather play with the guy getting the kills in as that means 3 less mechs on the field to shoot at me...

So which way will people play? The way that rewards them the most... except in the PUG queue, players seemed to forget that to get the assist that mech also had to die...

No you said the cbills that was only part of this event i for one didnt care about the event if i wanted some Mc i would just buy it now the event would of been worth my time if you only got 20 drops and got your best 10

[Jeb]

This was my orig post... I bolded the part that caused me the frustration... the cause of the problem IMO was the "event for the extra cbills"... did you just read the subject of my post, and not the actual post?

Jeb, on 16 November 2014 - 10:03 PM, said:

130 points with the points only being dmg / 15, assist x 20, and kill x 10 is just insane...
It rewards poor play, and LRM boating so you get your assists...

a few of the recent events were done well... then we fall back into this garbage...

Read some of the posts... people were going so far as NOT taking kill shots cause they wanted the assists...

Edited by Jeb, 17 November 2014 - 12:29 PM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Innocent, on 17 November 2014 - 07:36 AM, said:

Being a team based game, kills and assists should be valued the same. Too many people holding their shots to avoid getting the kill.

Don't forget people just shooting arms and legs so they could maximize their damage while not getting kills.

Seriously I understand the through process behind assists being worth more than kills because they were attempting to limit cutthroat game play where people were intentionally KSing from each other but their thoughts are faulty. You eliminate this type of game play by making a kill and an assist equal. Honestly this is how the in game rewards should work as well. Both kills and kill assist should give equal rewards. This way the incentive is to actually kill the enemy without being penalized if someone managed to sneak in a KS it out from under you. The "most damage" bonus is also great because being KSed doesn't matter because the one who did all the work, not the KSer, is the one rewarded.

[RazorbeastFXK3]

Getting x130 points wasn't that hard and I didn't even use LRMs. I'm rather happy that I was still able to have my points qualify even when my team lost miserably.

The extra points per assist seemed to me as only a buffer to try gearing players towards assisting kills instead of going down the glory hound route of "OMG dat MY kill! stahp steelng MY killz!" Decent tactic in trying to adjust the average gameplay of "ha ha, i got most killz!"

I could've done better if I was more focused on getting points but I enjoyed the 1.5million c-bill reward for my efforts ontop of the average 50k~100k c-bill per battle.

[Aresye]

Soulscour, on 17 November 2014 - 12:19 AM, said:

Keep in mind that if both are worth the same it will just be a damage competition. Think about the type of game play that would encourage... I don't like it. We do not need radical changes to the scoring for a better system, but to fine tune the value of assists in relation to kills.

With the current formula, yes, it would end up devolving to just a simple damage competition, which is why the formula I recommend (and have posted on many threads) is:

Score = (Kills x 10) + (Assists x 10) + (Solo Kills x 5) + (Kill Most Damage Done x 5) + ( [Damage Dealt - Team Damage] / 15) + (Wins x 10)

That formula right there would encourage players to try and get Solo Kills (which can't be stolen) and Kill Most Damage Done (can't be stolen either), but the bonuses for those are low enough that even if players don't get them, it doesn't mean they still can't score well. This puts lets emphasis on trying to steal kills, an equal emphasis on kills/assists, and a bigger emphasis on contributing to the overall team effort. It would also allow good players a bigger opportunity to score well, and avoids punishing players too heavily on a loss.

No formula is perfect, but this is about as close as you can get to being as fair and balanced as possible, with an emphasis on not only doing damage or getting kills, but doing ACCURATE damage in addition to securing the kills.

I realize that this would put those who cannot consistently aim well at a disadvantage. I say "too bad." I don't believe in participation trophies. It's a tournament with prizes that have monetary value, so why shouldn't those prizes go to the players who can play the game better? Want the prize? Play better! Simple as that.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Jeb, on 16 November 2014 - 10:03 PM, said:

130 points with the points only being dmg / 15, assist x 20, and kill x 10 is just insane...
It rewards poor play, and LRM boating so you get your assists...

a few of the recent events were done well... then we fall back into this garbage...

I liked Halloween, then this not so much